508 – More ways to do things faster and better: Tom talks Cell Phone & Tablet Automation

Episode 508 – Cell Phone Tablet Automation
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and eighty two of Screw the Commute podcast. We're going to revisit our cell phone and tablet automation today. I do this kind of episode every so often they keep reminding you to take advantage of the powerful technology you have in your hand on your mobile devices. You might also notice what a fanatic I am on automation techniques, and that's why I give away my automation e-book pretty much every episode. It's just saved me millions of keystrokes, and it allows me to respond very quickly to prospects. And I get the business when I, you know, usually the person that responds the fastest gets the business. So that's what this episode is about. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode five. Oh, seven. That was one of our Ask Me a question episodes I covered. How do you make content go viral? Trending products compromised email, what to do about it, noise on podcast and increasing the quality of your podcast and audio recordings, and how to keep up with your podcast schedule. That was a kind of a goofy one. You'll see, you'll see, uh, what I do to do that. All right. How'd you like me to send you big checks? Well, if you're in our affiliate and referral program, I'll send you big checks or PayPal or however else you want the money.

[00:01:46] I don't really care, but but you can really earn large commissions by referring our stuff. So check that out by emailing me at Tom@screwthecommute.com and we'll give you a full details. And like I said about automation, pick up a copy of our automation e-book. If you're new to the show, this book is just one of the techniques in this book has saved me over seven and a half million keystrokes. We actually estimated it a couple of years ago. It's probably, I don't know, eight, eight million now. So since I've been using it forever, ever, ever, and it cost twenty bucks one time. This is just one of the tips. Some of the stuff is free, so grab a copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. Again, automate listening to us at screwthecommute.com/app. All right now we're still going strong with our pilot program to help persons with disabilities. We're giving scholarships to people with disabilities and letting them legitimately learn from home so they don't have to travel. And then we're going to get them hired or help them start their own business. And then I'm taking a grant writing, or I took a grant writing course.

[00:03:15] And when I prove the concept, I'm going to go for big money from corporations and foundations to help loads of people. So I'd love to have your help on this. We've got to go fund me campaign at my school website is IMTCVA.org. This will all be in the show notes. This is episode 508. Anytime you want to get to an episode, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. And once you hit that page, the disabilities page IMTCVA.org/disabilities. You can click on the Go Fund Me campaign. You can see videos there of the people that are in the program. So far, we have two slots available still and very inspiring. I mean, two of the people are blind and they're shooting videos and and going through a course on internet marketing. So it's just amazing. So please check that out.

[00:04:10] All right, let's get to the main event. Cell phone and tablet automation. I am on iPhone and iPad. So the thing is folks, if you're on Android or some other tablet, all of them kind of follow suit with these features. Yeah, iPhone claims that they rolled out stuff first, right? Who cares, right? The fact is, is that almost all of the things I talk about are available on your other platforms if you happen to be on other platforms.

[00:04:42] By just Googling split screen for Android, you know, something like that, so so you can take advantage of these, I just want you to know about them and what they'll do for you. And then I do have some links in here so that you can just go directly to the instructions. But some of them, I don't you just Google or YouTube, the the name of the feature and then loads of people that are, you know, early adopters will have instructions on how to use it. Ok, the first thing is called quick note now in. Apple, you have to have iOS 15 for this, I just upgraded myself, my cell phone took about 15 20 minutes while I was doing something else, and a lot of these new features apply to them. Some some don't. Now this particular feature quick note, is for iPad. The phone does not have this yet, but so Apple just added a quick note feature so you don't have to split screen to work on something and take a note on it. So if you put your Apple Pencil at the bottom right corner of your iPad, a pop up is going to tell you a quick you know that a quick note will appear if that's what you intended to have happen and you click it and you can write your note right there on the screen. About what you were working on an iPhone doesn't have it yet, but you can you actually can put your Notes app in your control panel, and if you don't know how to do that, like I said, anybody can tell you how to do that.

[00:06:16] That way, you can do it. But it's it's not as easy yet as the iPad. And speaking of split view, iPad has it inherent, so you can work on two things at once on an iPad. But there's a free app for iPhone called split screen, dual window split screen door window, and you can display two apps at once and work with them independently. And you can allot whatever screen amount you want to either one. For instance, you could have a YouTube video playing in the top of your iPhone and then be working on something in the bottom screen. And you could just have the YouTube thing just tiny at the top and be plenty of room to work at the bottom. Or you could slide the divider bar down near the bottom to see more of the YouTube. And if you slide all the way to the bottom, the YouTube thing would be full screen. If you slide all the way to the top, the YouTube would disappear and then you'd be working on the other one. So it's a free app, split screen dual window. Now here's another one for you people that you know are susceptible to shiny objects. Ok. And it's called focus mode.

[00:07:35] Again, this is iOS 15, and I got a link in the show notes for you to go in-depth on how to use it. But basically, you know how you're working on something on your phone and then a notification will come in. Oh, I wonder what that is. And then another one will come in. Another one come in. Well, focus mode allows you to, when you're using it, just focus on what you're trying to work on and it shuts off the notifications. And the next little thing is that they also have an auto reply text that can go out to people that are trying to get you to talk through the messenger when you're in focus mode says I'm working on a project. I can't take your message right now, but I'll get back to you as soon as you can. You know you can make it whatever you want. So that is focus mode. And again, for those of you that susceptible to shiny object syndrome and just run off to all different directions without finishing something. This will help you out tremendously. So there's links for both the focus mode and the auto, how to set up the auto reply text that'll be in the show notes. But again, this this is iOS 15, so you have the update for this particular thing. You might as well go ahead and update may make sure you're back up before you update, folks, because you know updates can be goofy, so you won't want to lose anything.

[00:09:04] Ok, here's another interesting thing. How to reduce background noise when FaceTiming, and it's called voice isolation. So to get to that, you go to face time. And you swipe from the top right towards the bottom left. Ok, so you're in the FaceTime app, you swipe from top right to bottom left and then you're going to click the thing called Mike mode or microphone mode. And then it's going to give you some choices and you pick voice isolation. And what it does is it hones in on voice frequencies and cuts out background noise, fake frequencies. It's not perfect, but it makes your face time so much more clear. And one of the things I was questioning is, Well, does it remember that setting? And so I closed FaceTime and went back in and yeah, the setting was still on voice isolation, which is, you know, I wouldn't want to have to set it every time. So that's a very handy thing. And the link to that's in the show notes. So that's reducing background noise when FaceTiming. Voice isolation. Ok, now another thing for iOS 15 is you have the new hide my email function and what it does is it allows you to use your your mail, but it's not your real email. It forwards here, real email, and then if you respond, it responds through your fake email. You know, so so people don't know your absolute real email address, so that's in iOS 15.

[00:10:48] Hide my email, it's called. Well, there's another interesting thing. Safari has a new look. Your browser, but one of the features of it is that instead of hitting that little box to open up all the browser windows and go looking for the one you want, you can swipe back and forth on the actual you URL box and go between your browser windows. So that's a handy little feature if you like that. If you don't like that, you can. There is the ways you can go back to your old browser, but anyway, that's a way to get back and forth between browser windows. Now, this one is so simple, it's almost stupid. So when you need when you're, you know, let's say and you're sending a text to somebody and you need to put some numbers in it. Well. Most of us, I assume, don't know about this little trick, but. You know, you you switch to the numbers keyboard to put the numbers in and then you switch back to the ABC keyboard to keep typing, right? Well, here's the thing if you use your non-dominant typing hand, in other words, some of you are like super fast with both hands, so it doesn't matter. It's usually going to be the left hand because that's where this the switcheroo button is for the different keyboards, right? But so let's say you're typing a text, but you need to put a number in.

[00:12:22] You just hold down the ABC thing and it switches to the numbers. You type the numbers in and then let up on the ABC thing and you're back to the ABC keyboard, so you didn't switch all the way. It saves you a couple of keystrokes, but it's just another thing to make you go faster. See, so so that's like I said, it's so simple. It's almost stupid. But a lot of these things you just don't know they're there unless somebody tells you. So in that case, you're typing a text. You've got to put a number in hold on the ABC thing that that switches to the numbers, put the number in with your other hand, and then let up on it and you're back to the ABC. So that's where you go. So simple. It's almost stupid. Now another thing a lot of people don't know or use frequently, and some people don't like it. Ok, but I want you to at least know about it. It's called shake to undo. And this is set up in iOS 15 by hitting settings, accessibility touch and then shake to undo. You can either turn it on or off. Some people don't like it because in the course of their day, their phone shakes a lot. So, so basically what it is if you're typing something instead of having to click the cursor and then hit your X button overall to keep undoing whatever you just typed, you just shake your cell phone and it undoes whatever the last thing you did, and it works in many of the different functions on that.

[00:13:59] So that's called shake to undo. Another, it just speeds up everything that you're doing, shake to undo. And that's not shake your body. Ok, I don't shake the cell phone and side to side you got you got to play with a little bit to get the hang of which way to shake it. That sounds kind of funny in itself, doesn't it? Which way to play with it a little bit to find out which way to shake. I'm bad. All right now, this next thing isn't really an automation thing. I guess it could be, but there's been a major change in Apple Podcasts. So now the word subscribe applies to podcasts that have paid subscriptions where you pay so much a month. So this is a new thing some people are happy about. Some people aren't, but these are when you see the word subscribe. That means you are applying to not applying, but you're starting a process to pay. I mean, it'll tell you how much a month to 99 a month for some premium podcast or something. And now the word for the free ones is follow. So if you see follow, you're just listening like normally to free podcasts. But if you see the word subscribe, that now means and this is an Apple podcast only remember because there's loads of places you can listen to podcasts.

[00:15:31] But in Apple Podcasts, subscribe means paid and you know you won't accidentally just by hitting Subscribe Pay, you have to, you know, agree to to pay and follow is for free. Ok, next thing, boy, I wish I'd have had this in the last couple of years or at least known about it, I'm not sure if this is brand new or not, but these are called location based reminders. Oh my goodness. Well, this has saved me a lot of gasoline and and time, I'll tell you. So basically, you can set a reminder so that when you're in a certain area that you're in walking or driving or whatever you're doing, you get a reminder. And I'll give you an example of how this could have worked for me. So I had this dog leash, which I have loads of dog leashes, but I had a nice leather dog leash that one of the dogs chewed on. And so I thought, You know what, next time I go over to the The Shoe Repair Place? They'll fix it for me, I just need to drop it off, but I didn't want to make a special trip because I got loads of dog leashes, so had I had this reminder set up, I could have set it up for the dog or for the shoe shop. And then any time I was doing other stuff that I was around there, I would have got a reminder drop the leash off, see? So eventually made a special trip over there to drop the leash off.

[00:16:59] But I've been driven around the area. I mean, 50 times while I was carrying that leash around that I could have dropped it off. So this can be really, really helpful for a lot of you out there. Save you a time to do stuff efficiently while you're out and about. So that's location based reminders. Ok. Got two more here for you. One is I'm absolutely positive, no matter what system you're on, you've faced this kind of trouble. You want to place the cursor somewhere to either erase something or or type something new in and let's say, a text message or a note or something. And so you tap the screen and the cursor is not where you want it and then you you tap a little bit over and it jumps past where you are. It's just a pain in the rump and a big time waster. So what you do now is you drag and drop the the cursor if you hold your finger. Again, I'm not sure which all of these are iOS 15, but it's probably worth it to upgrade to iOS 15. But anyway, no matter where you put your finger down. Now you can get a big cursor that shows up under your finger. And then you can just slide it to where you want and let your finger up and it'll drop perfectly into place.

[00:18:26] That's going to save me so much time. I got to tell you because my fat fingers, I'm tapping all over the place and getting mad. So that's drag and drop cursors. All right, before I tell you about the last one, just want to remind you about the pilot program we have for persons with disabilities? It's something you could really be proud to support. We're going to use some of the money to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program, and the people are so darn inspiring. I'll tell you they've got three people out of five in their now making good progress. In fact, the one lady that's totally blind one month into the school, she's already helping her husband. On his he has a Web, a local construction site, she's already helping him improve it and she's totally blind. All right, so amazing because there's so many things about websites that don't have anything to do with the look of the website because she can't see the website. But she knows now that there has to be title tags and and keywords, and she's learning to do keyword research. And, you know, so all this stuff that's helping her husband only one month into the school. Very inspiring. So we can get these people in very productive places in their life by helping them with this training, something you can really be proud of.

[00:19:48] So give us a hand with that at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Click on Go Fund me and anything you can contribute is great. If you contribute at least $47, you get a free copy of I believe it's my book Kickstart Viral on how to make stuff go viral, but anyway, give it a give it a shot. No, no, I take it back, it's not kick-start viral, it's my brand new crowdfunding book on how you can raise money to finance your dreams without having to pay it back. So very powerful book to help finance whatever you're trying to do. Ok, so last tip is a face time flip screen, you know, a lot of times face time, you want to show somebody something, not just look at your face and you're trying to turn the camera around and hold it, but you can't tell where it's pointing and all that. So now you just tap on the screen and it'll give you options, and one of them is flip. And so you can flip to the other camera. Show them what you want to show. Tap on it again and flip it back to your face. So all of those things are great improvements. And like I said, anybody on Android or not on iOS, you just type in the function. And if Android doesn't have it, they'll probably have it shortly. All right, that's my story. Now I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.

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